How the score works
Every town gets a Crap Score from 0 to 100. The higher it is, the crapper the town. Here's what goes into it, minus the maths.
What goes in
Ten things nobody wants on their doorstep, and how much each one counts:
- fly-tipping: 20;
- anti-social behaviour: 20;
- serious road crashes: 20;
- sewage pumped out of storm overflows in or near the town: 15;
- food places with a hygiene rating of 0, 1 or 2 (in Scotland, those told to improve): 15;
- vandalism and arson: 10;
- dirty air (nitrogen dioxide and fine particles): 8;
- premises that can't get gigabit broadband: 8;
- fires started on purpose (bins, grass and the rest): 8;
- days of rain: 8.
That's 132 in all. The big three carry 60 of it, and the last four about a quarter between them: they're grim, but not as grim as a mattress in a lay-by.
How it's added up
For each of the ten, we take the town's figure for its size and line it up against every other town. A town that's worse than most gets a high mark for that one. Then the ten marks are blended by those weights, and all the towns are lined up again on the result. That gives the score. Roughly, a town on 80 is crapper than four out of five towns.
Small places get a bit of slack. One dodgy kitchen, one bad crash or one idiot with a lighter would send a village to the top of the table, so in small towns those three get pulled a little towards the middle.
Some figures only come council by council. Fly-tipping does, so every town gets its council's figure. Broadband is two parts the town's own and one part its whole council area's, villages and all, because the town's a short drive from the dead zone. If we're missing a figure for a town, it borrows its council's or county's, so every town still gets a score.
Fires are fiddlier. Wales only counts them for each whole fire service, so Welsh towns count as middling on fires, neither for the town nor against it. A few English fire services, London's among them, put far fewer down as started on purpose than everyone else does, so for those we estimate from all the outdoor and bin fires there.
Scotland
Scotland's towns are in the same league as everyone else's. Where Scotland counts something the same way, vandalism, sewage, dirty air, broadband and rain, its figure goes straight in.
Where it counts things its own way, anti-social behaviour, food hygiene, serious crashes and fires, we line the town up against the other Scottish towns and give it the English and Welsh figure from the same spot in the queue, so a town that's grim for Scotland scores as grim as one that's that bad south of the border.
Scotland publishes nothing on fly-tipping, so its towns count as middling on that one, and their council pages show street cleanliness instead.
The league table
Every town gets a score, but only towns of 10,000 people or more go in the league tables. Smaller places get a score and a sign but no place in the table, which is either a relief or an insult.
What doesn't count
Money. We don't use anything about income or poverty, anywhere. Being skint isn't crap. Dumping a mattress in a lay-by is.
The Crap Town of the Year vote doesn't touch the score either. That one's all yours.
The scale
- 0: posh Waitrose coma
- 50: mediocre ring road
- 100: total municipal collapse
Check our homework
Where our numbers come from lists the sources.